There was a deafening report and, when the smoke cleared away the submarine had entirely disappeared. The inference was that she had submerged without suffering injury, for had the shot struck her she would certainly not have sunk as rapidly as all that. "She's given us the slip all right," muttered the Lieutenant bitterly, and the gunner below the bridge echoed his remark in more pungent terms. As the destroyer came up, a man on the smack's deck--obviously the skipper--hailed her. "Can ye give us a tow?" he shouted. "Cast a line aboard as we pass you," answered Lawless, for he knew better than to stop and parley while an enemy submarine was around waiting for a chance to discharge a torpedo. Accordingly, a line attached to a towing rope was thrown from the smack to the destroyer as the latter surged past, and a minute or two later the fishing boat was heeling along in her wake. The skipper, standing in the bows, yelled the information that he had been held up by the submarine while trying to repair a defect in his engines. The _U_ boat commander, after seizing his small stock of petrol, was questioning him concerning the whereabouts of a British cruiser known to be in these waters, when the _Knat_ appeared. At sight of her the German officer jumped back on board his boat and, after firing one shot, closed the conning tower hatch. He, the skipper of the smack, could not say whether the destroyer's shot had taken effect, but was inclined to think that it had not. With the derelict boat still in tow, Lawless put into the harbour of a small fishing village between Clonakilty and Castle-townsend, just as it was getting dark. There the tow rope was cast off and the skipper was told to come aboard the _Knat_ as soon as he had dropped anchor some thirty yards or so distant. The order having been carried out, the skipper duly came aboard and was invited into the cabin. Here he proceeded to give a fuller version of his encounter with the submarine. The German commander, he said, had given him and his crew three minutes in which to leave the smack, and they were about to get their boat out when the _Knat_ arrived on the scene and saved the situation. "Well, skipper, you'd better stay and have some dinner with us," said Lawless, when the skipper had finished his story. "'Tis meself that'll be delighted to do that same, ye'r honour," answered the fisherman--an elderly man with twinkling grey eyes. He proved to be a most interesting, if somewhat unpolished, guest, and kept the two officers in an almost continual state of mirth with his quaint anecdotes and stories. Not only that, but he was amazingly frank and cheerfully confessed that, in the early days of the National Volunteer movement, he had been profitably engaged in smuggling arms into Munster. "And now?" queried Lawless. The old man shook his head knowingly.